This is a legal anime simulcast and webcast portal, with free access the first 2 months of the broadcast. Unfortunately, it is aimed at a French-speaking audience, so all subs are in French (but for those comfortable enough in Japanese, all the video have the original soundtrack).

The Ankama Group has announced their plans to move deeper into comics publishing, specifically manga publishing, with an initiative to kick off January 2011. Ankama, the Roubaix, France-based developer and publisher of comics, games, and cartoons in the DOFUS and Wakfu universes, has always maintained a sensitive if not sentimental connection to the visual and narrative disposition of manga artwork. Now, the group will put their passions for underground Japanese comics and art to healthy use by publishing a manga anthology, Akiba. The monthly collection presently aims to print the works of young or new Japanese manga-ka for consumption by French-speaking comics enthusiasts.

It is in French only, but an interesting article about the evolution of the manga market in France. It also highlights the progressive gaining of a foothold in Europe by Japanese publishers, especially through Viz Media Europe.

Tokyo, June 11, 2009 - (JCN Newswire) - NTT DOCOMO, INC. announced today that its wholly-owned European subsidiary DOCOMO Netherlands B.V. will launch Europe's first mobile-phone service for downloading Japanese comics, better known as manga, beginning today in France.

Workshop on Popular Culture, Cultural Policy, and Cultural Discourse in East and Southeast Asia, June 1-2, 2009, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The workshop on Popular Culture, Cultural Policy, and Cultural Discourse in East and Southeast Asia, will be held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. The purpose of this workshop is to conduct a comparative and multi-sited study of the emergence of the popular cultural industries of East and Southeast Asia, examine the corresponding cultural policies initiated by the various states in the region, and construct an empirically-plausible framework to examine related issues. The workshop will particularly focus on the cases of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean poplar cultures: their emergence, expansion to other markets in the region, and the discourse they create.

Panel 1: Popular Culture, Regionalization, and the State 1. Amitav Acharya, American University, "Culture, Regionalism and Southeast Asian Identity" 2. Galia Press-Barnathan, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "Does Popular Culture Matter to International Relations Scholars? Possible Links and Methodological Challenges" 3. Nissim Otmazgin, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "A Tail that Wags the Dog: Cultural Industry and Cultural Policy in East Asia" Commentator: Arie Kacowicz, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Panel 2: Cultural Flows and Soft Power 1. Chua Beng Huat, National University of Singapore "Delusional Desire: Soft Power and TV Dramas" 2. Jean Marie Bouissou, Science-Po "From Niche Market to Hypermarkets: The Birth, Growth and Maturation of the French Manga Market" 3. Eldad J. Pardo, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "The Comeback of Iran's Z $B{ (Brkh $Bb (Bneh: Ancient Heroes in the Global Age" Commentator: Eyal Ben Ari, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Panel 3: Cultural Policy in the Making 1. Kozuka Souichirou, Sophia University "Copyright Law as a Tool of New Industrial Policy?: Japan's Unsuccessful Attempt to Promote its Contents Industry" 2. Kukhee Choo, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies "Cool Japan Nation: Japanese Governmental Policy towards the Anime Industry" 3. Jung-Yup Lee, University of Massachusetts, Amherst "Managing the Transnational, Governing the National: Cultural Policy and the Politics of "Cultural Archetype Project in South Korea" Commentator: Ehud Harari, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Panel 4: Cultural Industry and Cultural Discourse 1. Miki Daliot-Bul, Haifa University "The New 'Japan Brand': Cool Japan as Zeitgeist" 2. Pang Laikwan, the Chinese University of Hong Kong "Censorship against Ghosts: China's Cultural Policy Historicized" 3. Kwai Cheung Lo, Hong Kong Baptist University "Historical Tensions in East Asian Popular Culture and the Roles of the State" Commentator: Chua Beng Huat, National University of Singapore

Panel 5: Cultural Production and Social Change 1. Marwyn S. Samuels, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "The Media Industry, Popular Culture and Social Change in Contemporary China" 2. Shin Hyunjoon, Sungkonghoe University "Trans/National Cultural Industries as an Agency of Regionalization? The Case of South Korea" 3. Cherian George, Nanyang Technological University "Silence and Protest in Singapore's Censorship Debates" Commentator: Nir Avieli, Ben-Gurion University

Panel 6: A Comparative Perspective: Popular Culture in the Middle East 1. Wael Abu-Uksa, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "State and New Media in the Middle East: An Overview" 2. Sariel Birnbaum, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "Historical Audio-Visual Dramas: From Egyptian Dominance to a Pan-Arab Satellite Discourse" 3. Tal Shenhav, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "Broadcasting the Future Generation: Gender Messages for Women and Youth in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Tunisia"

Panel 7: Concluding Comments and Open Discussion Peter J. Katzenstein, Cornell University Eyal Ben Ari, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; H-JAPAN<br /> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;April 5, 2009<br /> <br /> From: David Slater &lt;<a href="mailto:d-slater@sophia.ac.jp" target="_blank">d-slater@sophia.ac.jp</a>&gt;<br /> <br /> Graduate Fieldwork Workshop<br /> April 18th, 2009<br /> Sophia University (Yotsuya Campus)<br /> <a href="http://www.fla.sophia.ac.jp/about/location.html" target="_blank">http://www.fla.sophia.ac.jp/about/location.html</a><br /> <br /> Bldg. #10, room 301<br /> 10 am-noon<br /> ------------------------------</p><div id=":10w" class="ii gt">-----------------------------------------------------------------<br /> <br /> Title: Economic competitive advantage and cultural exports: how<br /> Japan got round cultural distance to claim global leadership in comic<br /> book publishing.<br /> <br /> Julien Vig<br /> (Sociology MSc candidate at Hitotsubashi University and<br /> research student at the Institute of Innovation Research)<br /> <br /> ABSTRACT:<br /> <br /> Since the 1990s, the joint influences of nation branding efforts and the<br /> increasing globalization of the economic and technological contexts<br /> within which media organizations operate have brought upon an era<br /> where America's dominant position as an exporter of contents is<br /> becoming increasingly challenged by new entrants, often industrial<br /> consortia backed by state agencies. Serious contenders may include<br /> India's Bollywood movies, Brazil's telenovelas, or South Korea's array<br /> of dynamic entertainment industries. Yet beyond the cultural significance<br /> of the phenomenon, their actual export performance only qualifies them<br /> as cultural niches when compared to the incumbent transnational American<br /> corporations, whose distribution monopolies and market power make their<br /> economic control of global flows a reality that remains hardly escapable.<br /> <br /> Japan, however, distinguished itself by securing global leadership in no less than three content industries. In videogames, animation and comic books, it stands out a leading exporting country, boasting impressive trade surpluses with America and Europe. There is a solid, established interdisciplinary body of international literature dedicated to Japan's videogame industry, and the anime industry has been similarly attracting increasing attention in the past ten years. The comic book industry on the other hand, arguably because of its limited legitimacy and economic significance outside the $4bn+ Japanese domestic market, remains largely understudied except for comic book and popular culture scholars.<br /> <br /> An overlooked specificity of the comic book industry stems from the most peculiar pattern of globalization it has experienced. From the 1950s onwards, the United States, France and Japan each developed their own publishing paradigm and standard formats: *comic book*, *album* and *manga*. These path-dependent creative and industrial trajectories would hardly interact until the second half of the 1990s. After their late encounter, Japanese manga emerged as the undisputed winner, reaching shares of about 1/3 of total comic book sales in value in both France and America in 2007.<br /> <br /> This achievement has interesting theoretical implications. On the one hand, media scholars showed that the primary vehicles for the development of * contra-flows* (defined as non-Western media flows which counter the previously established one-way information flow from western to non-west countries) are geographic, cultural or linguistic regionalism; yet this framework cannot account for how Japanese manga could succeed in Western markets, as none of the above patterns seems to apply. On the other hand, management scholars, in the dominant models of firm- and industry-level internationalization, accept as a prerequisite that agents are actively and strategically trying to internationalize; yet Japanese manga publishers long maintained a passive attitude towards market expansion outside of Asia.<br /> <br /> Drawing upon fieldwork in France and Japan, international comparisons of industry data and evidence from a consumer survey conducted in France in December 2008, my research aims to uncover the economics at work behind the success of Japanese manga on the global comic book scene. What are the conditions for the emergence of sustainable contra-flows? The study of Japan's prominent success in exporting domestic contents may hold the answer to this question and provide a blueprint for later entrants in the global cultural market.<br /> <br /> -- <br /> David H. Slater, Ph.D.<br /> Faculty of Liberal Arts<br /> Sophia University, Tokyo<br /> <br /> The Sophia server rejects emails at times. Should your mail to me get<br /> returned, please resend to: <a href="mailto:dhsla

Chibi Japan Marseilles is, as the name indicates, a smaller and Southern version of the now famous Japan Expo, which takes place in Paris later in the year. It is also more focused on mangas, animes and video-games, whereas Japan Expo also gives a fair share of its space to "traditional" Japan. Chibi Japan Marseilles will take place February 20-22, 2009. If you are in Southern France by then, don't hesitate to stop by.

This is the official Website of the International Comics Festival of Angoulême, in France. In 2009, the festival will take place from January 29 to February 1. If you happen to be in the Southern part of France (in Charente to be more precise) at this time of the year, don't hesitate to spend at least a day there. I have never attended it, but I have heard a lot of good things about this festival!

In French: Announcement of a new study of manga readers in France, which has been entrusted to the Humanities Department of the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon and the consulting company Tosca Consultants by the Book National Centre. The fieldwork will take place during the coming up Angoulême Comic Festival, which has been including a whole section devoted to manga for several years. If you are in France January 29-February 1, then, try to attend it. I believe it is worthwhile.